The buzz around the Oculus Rift, the virtual reality headset whose parent company was purchased by Facebook for a cool $2 billion, has grown deafening. Yet the reality is that this virtual reality system is still a fair way from being a commercially viable product.

For starters, before you can revolutionize the world of computing, you need some software.

Enter Oculus Connect¹ the first developer conference for the virtual reality device, which is set to take place in the heart of Hollywood—not your location for dev conferences—September 19-20th. From the official announcement:

Oculus Connect is a developer conference that brings together engineers, designers, and creatives from around the world to share and collaborate in the interest of creating the best virtual reality experiences possible.

Attendees will be the first to learn about upcoming Oculus technology, with sessions and workshops led by Oculus engineers and industry pioneers. Developers at the event will also have opportunities to receive design and engineering feedback directly from the Oculus team in hands-on labs.

“Upcoming technology” could mean a lot of things— controllers, Augmented Reality, haptics—but what is more interesting to me by far is the choice of location for the conference. The Loews Hollywood Hotel is steps from the famous Chinese Theater and the Dolby Theater where the Oscars are held. That may say more about the long term positioning of the Oculus Rift than anything else.

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There’s a rapturous term thrown around by VR enthusiasts: “The Metaverse.” It is a term that comes from the seminal Neal Stephenson science fiction novel Snow Crash, where it described a kind of embodied virtual reality.